"Visiting my niece in Portugal" Portugal by Alain_Smeets

Well I want to give you an impression of my visit to Portugal. If my niece wasn’t studying in Viana Do Castello, I think I never visited Portugal and when I think about that now, I’m glad I was here. I liked the north and especially Guimaraes and Penada-Geres.

After arriving at the airport, we picked up our rental-car and drove to Barcelos where the biggest market of Portugal was taken place. We walked around and looked at the ruins of the castle. We had warm sunny weather, more then 25 degrees. After that we went to Brago to have a small tosti and a drink. While we where sitting there, in our T-shirts, the Portuguese where walking their in their coats and thick sweaters. I can imagine that for them it’s not that hot compared to the summer. But for us it was summer weather. The next stop was the Bom Jesus and we climbed all the 609 stairs to go to the cathedral. It’s a very good place to see and on the terrace you have a good view over Braga. We spend the night in Guimaraes.

I like Guimaraes, a historic city with his castle and palace and the old buildings and a good terrace at the Cathedral on the market square. Also the Citania de Briteiros is nice to visit. It gives you a good impression of the life of the people 2000 years ago. I didn’t know that they already had so big settlements then. When we arrived later in Viana Do Castello, we rushed back to Porto to go to the Hart club to see Millionaire, a Belgian band playing their as the act before Muse. We managed to get in for free (no 18 euros entrance fee). We managed to get on the guest list of Millionaire because my friend knows the drummer. After the gig, we had a talk with the band (got free drinks from them) and went into the dressing room with a lot of Portuguese (men and women who went for an autograph), but we only went to the fridge, got a half litre of Guinness and enjoyed it. At 2h30 we went into the city to search a hotel.

The Saturday, we visited Porto, got another friend on the airport and beached in Viana. And on Sunday we went to Penada-Geres, I like this national Park because I like nature much more then cities. We went to Ermida, a small village, my friends went for a swim in the waterfalls, but I found it to could. We spend the whole day in the area and this is for me the best part of the trip next to Guimaraes.

Monday we drove next to the ocean (as much as possible) back to Porto to go to Calem to taste some port and we saw some other places in Porto. It was very nice to eat at the Cais da Ribeira in a nice surrounding. And to bad that we had to go back on Tuesday.

Portugal is a very nice county, with a lot of picturesque places, sometimes if feels like the time stood still in those small villages where you barely can cross another car. I’m glad I went to see my niece and when I have the time next to the longer travels that I want to make, I will go back to Portugal.